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The Music Thread

This one's for the selfish cunts down on the Atlantic floor: you greedy little piggies - I hope ye meet your makers down there.

 
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Seeing as the music threads are always so popular, I'll try adding a variety of styles.

This one suits perfectly your early morning stirring in the bed to stirring your coffee too.

A free jam on a single chord, John McLaughlin's skills are world standard. Born of an Irish father, he stepped into the world of jazz at an early age, only to become one the world's finest ever players. He's worked with them all over the years using his Mahavishnu Orchestra as his main vehicle. He's married to one of the Labeque twins, Katia: these two are said to have an unusual amount of psychic/miraculous musical connections that nobody seems to be able to explain, least of all they themselves.

John McLaughlin: 'One Melody'

 
Lumpy Von Talbot said:
Brill- I'll be on that later today on Spotify...
Click to expand...

The album title is 'Belo Horizonte' and is extremely difficult to find. Even online. I bought a rare wax copy in Berlin back in the 90's and took it back home to Dublin. It was my back pocket bible of free jazz for a number of years. Some of the arrangements are incredibly complex while with others it's like he's dancing on the high-wire making you think he's about to fall.

He never does though: but one thing he will do is make sure every record he makes has one error somewhere on the album that you'll find eventually. Searching for it usually makes you miss it. Best to let it dawn on you in its own sweet time. He does this because only the Buddha is perfect. Every Persian rug has its flaw, and every human is a walking example of it.

Here's a little something special from Wicklow town called Róisín Murphy:

 
Mowl said:
The album title is 'Belo Horizonte' and is extremely difficult to find. Even online. I bought a rare wax copy in Berlin back in the 90's and took it back home to Dublin. It was my back pocket bible of free jazz for a number of years. Some of the arrangements are incredibly complex while with others it's like he's dancing on the high-wire making you think he's about to fall.

He never does though: but one thing he will do is make sure every record he makes has one error somewhere on the album that you'll find eventually. Searching for it usually makes you miss it. Best to let it dawn on you in its own sweet time. He does this because only the Buddha is perfect. Every Persian rug has its flaw, and every human is a walking example of it.

Here's a little something special from Wicklow town called Róisín Murphy:

Click to expand...

I read about Persian rugs somewhere having a flaw built in deliberately so as not to impinge on Mr Allah's ground as only Mr Allah can achieve perfection :)
 
odanny said:
Click to expand...


Manu Katche on the drums. He first broke through back in the 1980's on Robbie Robertson's 'Somewhere Up The Crazy River' and, like Stewart Copeland before him, he reinvented groove drumming across the entire kit as opposed to kick/snare/hi-hat type grooving. He has a wonderful way of creating space in songs and his pocket is so tight and natural.

After the gig with Robbie he was the most in demand player around for a couple of decades and is still considered hot property.

I learned a lot from listening to how he interprets people's songs, but his solo albums are something else altogether.

Also - interesting song of Sting's to choose.

That album was him trying to get over and come to terms with his Father's death. He was a shipbuilder and a fisherman. Newcastle blood. Working class folks all the way. The sole cages refers to fishing off the coast, and the sole cages collected the fish. But he spelled it soul instead of sole. He uses the metaphor of a cage to illustrate the stage we all get to in our lives where we question where we are in life, how we got there, and how life's many twists and turns creates exponential possibilities we probably never even considered.

The key change at just after four minutes is also delicious.

On the album version, some of the songs segue into each other and clever key changes were employed to make the transition as smooth as possible. That's where Manu's input really shows itself as a massive understatement of the emotive lyrics, but he sails through the changes and nails them down onto the floor.

That's always been my intent: play the song, not the instrument.

And when you're playing the song, don't listen to yourself - listen to the players around you, that's what they're doing.

This track begins the album. It's highly emotive stuff and I always found it very moving. The time signature shifts are sublime, and the overall dynamic amazing. It begins in a 6/8 feel, but towards the end Manu Katche shifts it back into a 3/4 over a few bars of gradually letting go of the previous part and creating the next part in real time. You can't do it with a computer or ProTools, it's very a human task and has to feel organic, otherwise it'd just sound daft and pretentious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkLjMu8SKqk

Listen from after the first chorus and bridge and hear how Manu turns it around by playing all of the backbeats at first then removing beats as he moves forward. Hard to focus on with such emotive lyrics taking all of your attention.
 
But I digress.

Here's something a little bit rather different:



Many years back I dated a Japanese girl named Yoko. She played the bass in a Kyoto-based band called 'Nukey Pikes' who did a splendid speed/metal cover of 'Dancing Queen' even though they didn't seem to know the lyrics, so they added their own before hitting the chorus and singing: 'dancing queeeen, lee-the-bee-dada-yee-yee-yee-oh yeah - danding queeeee - sheela-bee-ding-dong bada-bee-oh yaaa...'

Best version ever.
 
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